Skip to main content
Main

Clam and Tomato Bisque

A creamy bisque made with clams, tomatoes, cream, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clam and tomato work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and 133 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Pour water over clams, then drain.

  2. Add the finely chopped hard part of the clams to the water.

  3. Heat slowly to boiling point, cook for twenty minutes, then strain.

Make the bisque

  1. Cook the butter with the onion for five minutes.

  2. Remove the onion, add the flour, and gradually stir in the clam water.

  3. Add the cream, the soft part of the clams, and as soon as the mixture reaches boiling point, add the tomatoes with the soda.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne, and serve immediately.

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clam + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Clam + buttertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together840 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together20,622 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main flavour and the body of the bisque, with the shells flavouring the cooking water.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the bisque when cooked with butter and then combined with the clam water.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Stewed and strained tomatoes
Add acidity and colour, balancing the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Add the tomatoes and soda at the boil. Adding soda to acidic tomatoes while hot causes a fizz and can curdle cream, so the tomatoes go in only once the mixture reaches boiling point and the soup is served right away.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, butter, flour, cream, tomato):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Asparagusabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter, flour, cream, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Illustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Cream of Tomato SoupIllustrationCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesIllustration of Tomato BisqueIllustrationTomato Bisque61 recipesIllustration of Cream Tomato SoupIllustrationCream Tomato Soup28 recipes